Mr. Diamantis missed the most important ethics rules before deciding he could seek and accept cash from contractors.

Such a day in Bridgeport. Former state school construction finance program director Kostantinos Diamantis took the witness stand in his federal criminal trial this afternoon to explain all sorts of things. An early preposterous nugget was his testimony that he studied the state’s ethics code and decided it contained no prohibition on him taking money from school construction contractors in exchange, as the former Democratic state representative described it, an introduction.

The Twardy Report, commissioned by Governor Ned Lamont after a 2021 Hartford Courant column lit this fuse, began with excerpts from the same ethics statutes Diamantis swore under oath he studied before accepting a lot of cash. Here are those unambiguous statutes highlighted in the 2022 Twardy Report that revealed federal criminal investigators were on the case:

Conn. Gen. Stat. § 1-84 (Prohibited activities):

(a) No public official or state employee shall, while serving as such, have any financial interest in, or engage in, any business, employment, transaction or professional activity, which is in substantial conflict with the proper discharge of his duties or employment in the public interest and of his responsibilities as prescribed in the laws of this state, as defined in section 1-85. . . .

(c) [N]o public official or state employee shall use his public office or position . . . to obtain financial gain for himself, his spouse, child, child’s spouse, parent, brother or sister or a business with which he is associated. . . .

(g) No public official or state employee or candidate for public office shall solicit or accept anything of value, including but not limited to, a gift, loan, political contribution, reward or promise of future employment based on any understanding that the vote, official action or judgment of the public officialor state employee or candidate for public office would be or had been influenced thereby.

Conn. Gen. Stat. § 1-85 (Interest in conflict with discharge of duties):

A public official, including an elected state official, or state employee has an interest which is in substantial conflict with the proper discharge of his duties or employment in the public interest and of his responsibilities as prescribed in the laws of this state, if he has reason to believe or expect that he, his spouse, a dependent child, or a business with which he is associated will derive a direct monetary gain or suffer a direct monetary loss, as the case may be, by reason of his official activity. . . . A public official, including an elected state official or state employee who has a substantial conflict may not take official action on the matter.

Published October 16, 2025.